Chapter 261: The Mothglass Road Fired on Its Own Hunter

The road answered Sivra with a weapon.

One silver pane turned edgewise in the storm. Green veins filled inside it, first dim as moss under ice, then bright enough to show every hook in Myrn’s black harness.

Jiang lay ahead of the saddle with his belly pressed between two breathing slits. Neither webbed foot had a proper grip. He held Myrn’s neck with the useful wing. The injured one could only press his ribs.

Below him, the red Armada lantern widened.

Myrn had not flown closer to it. She had fallen.

Jiang’s old human stomach remembered elevators, bad turbulence, and one New York flight spent arguing about a broken seat belt. He would have apologized to that seat belt now. The plane had possessed a floor, which in retrospect was excellent engineering.

His penguin body offered no useful response to empty air. It spread the toes that should have gripped ice and found only wet hide.

The white thorn beneath the saddle pulled again. Her wounded wing bent toward the red light, and the silver road slid higher on their left.

"Lift," the rider said.

She drew the left correction rein.

The buckle tightened before Myrn moved.

Pain crossed the mount’s shoulder in one hard contraction. Every neck slit shut around Jiang. The injured wing folded, and the storm rose past them as they dropped.

Hest’s yoke slammed against the rear harness. Valea swung beneath it with both wrapped barbs still looped through the crossrings. Aylin lost the high-root line from her numb fingers and caught it against her elbow before it could strip from the harness.

The rope burned through her sleeve as their weight came onto it. She could see two fingers bent around the line and felt nothing from either. Rather than guess whether they still held, she shoved the rope behind her knee and made the leg take what the hand could not report.

"Release that rein!" she shouted.

"It is the only thing keeping her left."

"It pulled before the wing did."

The rider looked down at the black buckle. Red light flashed along its underside.

She eased the rein.

Myrn’s neck slits opened together. Air struck Jiang’s breast with the smell of hot salt and blood. The sound wing unfurled by its own uneven effort and stopped their fall for one breath.

Her head dipped toward the red descent, then lifted without a rein. One hooked forefoot opened and closed against the storm. She was searching for balance while the tack kept translating every human correction into pain.

That breath was enough for the silver pane to finish aiming.

A narrow point grew from its green-lit center. Threads inside the silver pane braided around it like veins gathering behind a fang. Nothing on the road spoke or displayed a judgment. Its answer was a weapon choosing an angle.

The rider twisted in the saddle. "Get your people above the rear line."

"They are not mine," Aylin said.

"Then tell the independent ones they are about to become weather."

Hest pulled his chest level with the yoke. Valea planted one boot against his thigh, climbed past him, and shifted the first barb to the sound side of the harness. Its white point remained hidden under wrapping.

"You always wanted to fly," she said.

"I wanted to arrive somewhere afterward."

Their weight moved away from Myrn’s damaged shoulder. The mount gained half a wing stroke and used it without waiting for the rider.

Aylin climbed last. She locked the high-root line between both boots. Her reliable fist pulled while the numb hand braced that wrist instead of taking the rope.

Jiang watched the green point inside the road pane lengthen.

Loose white fibers remained caught beneath the feathers at his breast. They had stopped moving when the cradle fell away. Now each one lifted toward the black harness as if a tide had entered his coat.

The rider saw them.

Mothglass came down between Jiang’s breast and Myrn’s neck.

Aylin drew the high-root line tight. "Touch him and you lose the hand holding your rein."

"If his pattern reaches my mark, the road burns the carrier."

"Pin the root. Not Jiang."

For an instant, the rider’s gray eyes stayed on Aylin rather than the weapon forming ahead. Aylin did not loosen the line or promise Jiang was harmless. Neither claim would have survived the white fibers moving under his feathers.

She simply held Sivra’s gaze until the rider chose which body her blade would touch.

Then she turned her wrist.

The flat of the glass blade caught the white fibers and pressed them against an outer harness plate. Its edge never entered feather or living hide. Green veins inside the blade darkened wherever the fibers touched.

Jiang disliked having a sword across his breast. He disliked becoming smoke more.

He held still until Myrn found another breath.

"Hunter," Aylin said, "the correction rein is carrying the same pulse as the thorn."

"Sivra Vetch. Keep shouting if the wing folds."

"Sivra, let it go."

"Not while he is lying over Myrn’s throat."

Jiang struck the harness plate once with his beak, then tapped Myrn’s warm skin beside it.

Splitflow opened through his breast.

The mount’s pressure changed everywhere at once. Breath widened beneath him. A foreclaw curled against empty storm. The sound wing gathered, hesitated, and pushed.

Inside the correction strap, the other pull stayed smooth.

Sivra tightened the rein by one finger.

The imposed line deepened before Myrn’s injured wing turned.

Jiang hit the strap twice.

"He says you are steering the thorn," Aylin said.

"He says nothing I understand."

"Myrn does. Watch her shoulder."

At last, Sivra watched the wounded shoulder.

She drew again, barely enough to move the leather. White flesh under the buckle contracted. Myrn screamed through her neck slits and tried to bite the rein behind her own shoulder.

Sivra opened her fist and released the rein.

The wing did not heal. The torn edge continued shedding clear scales into the storm, and the puncture beneath the saddle still bled. Yet Myrn chose the next beat herself. It carried them across the red pull instead of deeper into it.

The silver road shifted closer.

So did its weapon.

Three more panes turned behind the first. Fine moth-scale bridges joined them, each trembling as the corrupted mark beneath Sivra’s saddle sent another pulse.

"Why would your road kill its own hunter?" Valea asked.

Sivra kept the blade across the white fibers. "Mothglass kills unfinished gods before they learn a road. My mark is telling it one is already in my saddle."

Her eyes dropped to Jiang.

"The last hatchmaster I spared grew mouths for three dead hunters. It used their names to open the way home."

Myrn’s next wing beat shook water from Sivra’s burned cheek.

"One voice belonged to the woman who taught Myrn her first road," Sivra continued. "I watched her die. Two nights later, that voice asked me to lower the beast bridge. It even remembered where she laughed in the sentence."

Nobody offered her comfort. The green point ahead had been built out of the choice she made afterward.

Jiang could not deny the white fibers trying to enter her tack. He also could not become whatever fear had made of the last creature.

"His name is Jiang," Aylin said.

"Names opened the last road."

"Then watch what he does before you decide what his opens."

He pulled his breast away from the blade.

The fixed strands stretched from his coat to the harness plate.

Sivra moved the blade with him rather than cutting.

That small choice did not make her safe. It made room for Jiang to turn.

He pressed his beak into the gap beneath the correction strap. Black leather tasted of salt, oil, and Myrn’s blood. The white thorn lay deeper than his reach, but the strap crossed a raised glass bead before entering the guild mark.

The bead tightened whenever Sivra touched the rein.

Jiang hooked the leather behind it and pulled sideways.

His cracked beak slipped. Pain jumped through his jaw, and the strap snapped back against Myrn’s wound.

The mount kicked into empty air.

Sivra caught Jiang by the loose coat before he rolled beneath the injured wing.

For one ugly moment, he hung from the hand that had tried to take his head.

"Do not mistake this for trust," she said.

Jiang pecked her wrist hard enough to make the point.

She set him back on Myrn’s neck. "Good. We understand each other."

The road weapon brightened.

Hest hauled the yoke farther toward the sound side. Valea used one covered barb as a lever through the crossring, moving their combined weight without exposing the hook. Aylin fed the high-root line through Sivra’s rear brace and made a loop broad enough for three separate grips.

Nobody tied Jiang into it.

Myrn beat both wings.

Her sound side carried too much. The damaged side arrived late, but it arrived under her own effort. They rose far enough for the silver panes to flatten across the storm ahead.

A strip of clear road opened between them.

Sivra leaned toward it, then stopped herself before touching the correction rein.

"Myrn," she said, quieter now. "See it."

The mount’s black eye found the opening.

She turned toward it.

The white thorn contracted beneath the saddle.

Myrn fought the pull, neck slits flaring around Jiang. The silver opening remained ahead for one wing stroke, then two.

The first pane fired.

Jiang saw green light cross the rain.

It did not aim for him.

The bolt passed over his head and entered Sivra’s black moth-scale banner. Every translucent scale ignited from within.

Under the saddle, her guild mark answered with Jiang’s fixed first note.

A second pane turned toward Myrn’s heart.